Animal welfare is improving with simulated canines.
An unfortunate reality is that some veterinary schools depend on use of live animals in terminal and survival surgery labs for training purposes. (For those unfamiliar, terminal surgeries are those where the animal is euthanized after the procedure rather than recovered.) It’s a tough situation: Pet owner wants their veterinarians to be skilled when operating on their little furry family members, but no one, of course, enjoys knowing animals may be going through pain or sacrifice to achieve this result.
Recognizing this opportunity to improve animal welfare, SynDaver has created a synthetic canine that is similar to its full-body human surgical simulator, with organs and heated blood flowing through its veins. The technology is extremely expensive to produce, and the company has created an indiegogo campaign to raise money to make it possible to donate the simulators to veterinary schools in the name of helping animals.
See the indiegogo page if you’d like to see video or donate to the campaign.
